12 May 2022
ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM has slammed the decision of SafeWork SA not to prosecute Gayle Woodford’s employer over her 2016 murder as “absolutely shameful” and “completely unacceptable’’.
Ms Woodford, an Outback nurse, was lured from the property she shared with her husband Keith in the small and notoriously violent APY Lands community of Fregon, and raped and murdered by convicted sex offender Dudley Davey. Davey had claimed that his grandmother needed medical assistance.
Mrs Woodford had been working as a nurse for the Nganampa Health Council and was on-call the night she was murdered. Davey, who had a long history of violent and sexual offending, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, with a non-parole period of 32 years.
In April last year, Deputy State Coroner Anthony Schapel found that Mrs Woodford’s death could have been prevented had Nganampa Health Council (NHC) not allowed nurses to work alone when attending to male clients. Police had even warned the NHC that not even their own officers attended jobs without a partner in the APY Lands.
The circumstances surrounding Gayle’s death sparked what would become a three-year crusade by her family for laws to ban single-nurse postings in remote areas - a cause also championed by the ANMF (SA Branch).
Gayle’s Law – which protects health care professionals working in remote areas from attending after-hours emergency callouts alone – finally became fully operational after it was passed by the State Government in November 2019.
Today, media personality David Penberthy, speaking on FIVEAA and writing in The Australian, revealed SafeWork SA would now be the subject of a far-reaching independent inquiry into its work practices following an outcry over its failure to prosecute – an investigation instigated by the new State Government.
Speaking at our A Voice to Lead online forum yesterday, Ms Dabars said: “We think it is an absolutely shameful set of circumstances that has led to the regulator failing to prosecute the employer for their actions or inactions in relation to safety.
“We believe it is completely unacceptable. Had we the power to prosecute ourselves we would be pursuing it ourselves as an advocate.
“We don’t have that capacity at the moment, it is something that we have argued strongly for and will continue to argue strongly for,” Ms Dabars said.
“We believe that we, as an organisation which advocates and represents nurses and midwives in the workplace, we should also have the right to prosecute in the event we believe an employer is failing to meet its occupational, health, safety and welfare requirements.
“The prosecutor, the law and, quite frankly, the employer, all three need to change.’’
ANMF (SA Branch) Director, Operations and Strategy, Rob Bonner told David Penberthy it was not SafeWork’s role to second guess what a court might find. Mr Bonner said it was SafeWork’s job to mount a prosecution based on what was clear evidence of management failure.
“When you think about what the Woodford family went through it is a disgrace that they never got to have their day in court,’’ Mr Penberthy quoted Mr Bonner on FIVEAA.
“And while that is not now able to happen because the time for a prosecution has expired and it can’t be reopened again, having a proper look at the process that led to this disgraceful set of circumstances is something that is long overdue.’’
Listen to the FIVEAA audio
here.